


So Do it With Your Mouth Open

by GoldStarGrl



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Allusions to abuse, F/M, First Kiss, High School, M/M, Unrequited Love, mentions of statutory rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-03 05:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10237190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: Or, "The Gang Has Traumatic, Incestuous, Confusing, and Disappointing First Kisses"





	1. Dennis

**Dennis is fourteen**

He doesn’t sleep the whole night after it happens.

He’s just so amped up, so proud and preening, that he can’t calm down. That must be it.

Dennis Reynolds, not even old enough to drive (although he did try to con his way into a hardship license he week after his birthday to no avail) got totally laid. In school. In the goddamn library, just like in a Penthouse forum letter. He always thought those magazines were full of shit, but now he just doesn’t know.

This morning he hadn’t even kissed anyone. Now he wasn’t even a virgin anymore. It was thrilling stuff.

He’d asked Mrs. Klinsky if she could help him use the card catalog to find a book about the impeachment of Nixon. It was almost four in the afternoon on a Friday, and the rest of St. Joe’s student body had vacated the premises as fast as humanly possible. He could hear the clocks on the wall ticking the whole time.

She made a comment about how refreshing it was to see a student who went out of his way to educate himself outside of class. She climbed up the step-ladder to pull the book for him and he stared at the seams that ran up the backs of her pantyhose. Their hands touched and lingered as she passed the book to him, ink on her fingers, and told him that she had been watching him, that she could see how mature he was, even more than some of the seniors.

And then she reached up and brushed the pads of her middle and index fingers over his hair, shorn above his ear. And then she leaned down and kissed him, and kept kissing him even though he didn’t know totally what to do back, even though it took her a few tries to get her tongue in his mouth.

She took off her glasses and dropped them on the speckled carpet and she grabbed his shoulders and he didn't know what to do with his hands but he knew he shouldn't just let them hang so he grabbed her back and told himself his hands were shaking from hunger.

And then he walked home - having missed his bus - and stripped down to his boxers and floated in the pool in his backyard until the sun went down, until Frank came home from work and told him to get his ass inside, he was going to shrivel up and turn into some kind of frog kid if he wasn’t careful. So he went up to his room, still in his underwear reeking of chlorine, and he hadn’t left since.

Every detail of it was seared into his brain. On a constant loop. It’s like, he couldn’t stop picturing the awesomeness even when- _if_ he tried.

At about three in the morning, he gets out of bed and walks across the hall, to his sister’s room. Barbara doesn’t let Dee lock her door - she suspects she’s stashing junk food in there and says that Dee has enough working against her without being fat - so he slips in through the crack and stands, staring at her sleeping under her canopy. She always takes off her back brace when she’s sleeping, even though she’s not supposed to, and she looks about three times smaller and less bird like, curled under her floral comforter.

He watches her chest rise and fall and he wants to wake her up, wants to brag and make her listen and get her thoughts on this matter. His hand his hovering over her shoulder, ready to shake her awake and into being his captive audience, but something stopped him.

He didn’t really want to explain what had happened, in so many words. It felt weighty in his stomach, and something - call it twin telepathy, call it his genius intuition - told him that Dee wouldn’t understand it. She would pin down that weighty feeling and step on it and refuse to focus on anything else until it dragged the rest of him down too.

He drops his hand and notices it's trembling again. He did skip his dinner.

What happened was his. To lock inside him and tuck away down deep and only take out when he sees fit.

So he slipped back out the door, back into his own bedroom, and sat on the floor, staring at himself in his vanity mirror, wide-eyed and pale, until the sun came up, and long after.


	2. Dee

**Dee is fifteen**

It’s not fair that Dennis gets to do everything first. That he gets everything first.

Dee is technically three minutes older than her brother. It should have been less, C-Section twins usually weren’t more than a few seconds apart, but Dennis was wrapped in Dee’s umbilical cord. The doctor had to cut it off his neck and shoulders. Frank used to say she was trying to kill him before they were even people. Sometimes she wished she had.

But the point was, she was older. He shouldn’t be lapping her. But he was. In _everything._ Making friends, making honor roll, making out and losing his virginity.

He wouldn’t let that last one go. He bragged about it the whole way to the Shore, telling her that he and an older girl had done it - _it!_ \- a few Fridays before school got out for the summer. He wouldn’t stop mentioning it; while she got her hair braided, while they got drunk on illicit beer and walked along the beach, while the tide moved in and out and the night came on with a briny smell.

After stuffing their faces with shellfish, Frank and Barbara disappeared somewhere to fight or fuck or both, and Dee tried to slip under the boardwalk, to collect sea glass, to get a solitary hour alone.

But as soon as she lowered herself from the pier to the beach, her bare feet sinking into the damp, cold sand, she heard a creak of wood and a soft thump as someone dropped down behind her.

She sighed, pushed her shoulders - she got her back brace off as soon as she was out of her mother’s eyesight, fuck her, she was wearing a goddamn bikini - and continued walking like she couldn’t hear him. His footsteps synced up with hers almost immediately, walking in unison. Dennis had done that as long as she could remember - she doubted he even noticed it happened.

She noticed, though. She always noticed. Dennis was a constant presence in her life, a looming dark cloud broiling over the ocean, always just a little too close to disregard or forget about, even for a second.

Still, she tried for awhile, in vain. She locked her eyes on the ground, roving for glittery glass or maybe even some money someone dropped from up above. But he kept pace, whistling, occasionally mentioning how “little kid stuff like looking for treasure was so... _blasé_ when you’ve experience life like I have.” Above them, that horribly annoying carnival music played on an endless loop. _Da-da duh-duh-duh-duh-da-da-da-duh…_

Dennis was in the middle of his third, “You wouldn’t know anything about this, Dee, but when two people engage in the act of _making love_ -” When she finally whipped around, the hard plastic beads at the end of her braids whacking Dennis on the tip of his nose and in the corner of his left eye.

“Ow! Fuck! Jesus!” He screeched, clapping his hand over his face. “Put those away, you’re gonna take someone’s eyes out.”

Dee laughed, barking and nasty, but tucked her braids behind her ears nonetheless. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“Because I’m _bored_ , Deandra.” He heaved a heavy sigh. “I’m a state away from my lady and I've only got _you_ to regal with my exploits."

“Jesus Christ, will you shut up about this chick?” Dee turned around again and walked closer to the water’s edge. The ground was getting rockier, more fraught with pebbles under her feet. Dennis’ breath was on her neck, like the freak he was.

“Why? Are you jealous?”

She raised her arm and flipped him off without turning around. “I just don’t think she exists.”

“ _She exists_!” Dennis snapped, sudden rage filling him so completely it seemed someone flipped a switch. He rounded around her so they were face to face. He was a few steps ahead, again.

The glow of the carnival games and the ferris wheel bled through the slats above her, orange light casting down onto his cheekbones. He looked gaunt, lately. He threw up a hand, closed his eyes briefly, and emitted a low, growling noise from the back of his throat, before speaking again. “She exists. You’re just jealous that I’m getting it on the regular and you, sis, are going to die a virgin.”

He smiled and clacked his teeth together, biting the air. She slapped him.

Not as hard as she knew she could, but they were standing so close together she couldn’t get a lot of leverage. Dennis lifted his hand again and touched his cheek, almost with curiosity.

“God, the hair, your dustbin-cover hands.” He took a step closer. “You’re dangerous.” The pebbles were digging into the balls of Dee’s feet. In that hazy mix of night and neon she couldn’t tell if she was feeling her own pain or Dennis’.

“Yeah.” She snapped. “I’ll break your fucking nose.”

“You could kill someone.”

“I should’ve killed _you_ when I had the chance.” She tried. It came out soft.

“Aw. Dee.” Dennis chuckled. "Be nice."

"Fuck you."

 “...Don’t you want to know what it’s like?”

Her eyebrows knit together. “Killing someone?”

Dennis shrugged, leaning in. The pointiest parts of his bony shoulders pressed against hers. “Killing...kissing…” He shrugged, tilted head, raised eyebrows, bitten lip. “Any of it. It’s all primal, animal. We can’t ever forget we’re animals.”

Her hands were resting on the top of his shoulders, and a small voice in the back of her head explained it away by telling her she was trying to push him back, claim personal space. “Yeah.” She said, and that voice, so small, so unsure, couldn't possibly be hers. Dennis’ eyebrows lifted.

“Yeah?” His hand was under her armpit, sliding downward. He stared at her, waiting for confirmation. He definitely looked tired now, eyes ringed with dark circles - what else could make them look so heavy, so predatory?

She nodded. He kissed her.

Just once, just quickly. His lips were soft, and she tasted her own cinnamon chapstick on them. She _knew_ he had stolen it from her purse on the car ride here.

But her eyes still closed. Her chin still followed him when he pulled away. His shoulders disappeared from under her hands.

Shit. What had just happened. She wanted to keep her eyes closed forever, until the tide came in and swept her away and she hadn’t just done something insane and wrong, all twisted around and confused in the strange lights and the moon dragging the oceans around them. But she could feel him waiting, staring at her, and forced her eyes open.

He wasn’t sneering. He wasn’t laughing. He held up both hands. An innocent man. “See? That primal shit is the best shit. And you and me?” He wagged his pointer finger back and forth between them. “We’ve been together since we were cells. Doesn’t get more primal than that.”

Dee didn’t say anything. She could still feel the heat from his hand on her skin.

Dennis bit the air again. “I’m starving.” He said. “So, I’m gonna go grab some shaved ice, then I'm gonna find some quarters so I can call my lady. See you later, Sweet Dee.” And he slapped her on the shoulder and jogged back the way they came, towards the top of the pier, and civilization.

Dee stood until the tide reached the bottom of her sundress, soaking it through.

Dennis did everything first. Even crossing that last line.


	3. Mac

**Mac is sixteen**

The last gasp of Pennsylvania summer was making Mac sweat.

He ripped off his St. Joe’s mandated button-up and tie as soon as the final bell rang - he couldn't believe it was only the first fucking day - but he was still hot sitting on the cracked pavement under the paltry shade of the bleachers, his tank top sticking to his stomach.

Charlie had detention for setting off a bottle rocket in shop class, but Dennis was there, a pack of fruity cigarettes tucked in his pocket of his own button-up (somehow still unrumpled and dry). He still had no idea how to smoke them - suburb kids never did, Mac always laughed watching them choke and spit - but spending an afternoon watching him try, with those long, pale fingers and blue-eyed concentration, wasn't a bad one.

Until Dennis stopped in the middle of his sentence and waved. Mac turned around and two more thin, overheated figures emerged from the haze.

"Ugh, what is Dee doing here?" Mac asked, flopping a little to the side. Dee flipped him off while she tried to sit cross-legged, squatting awkwardly with her back brace banging against the sloping metal rafters. Strands of blonde hair, damp with sweat, stuck to her forehead.

Dennis didn’t answer, his eyes going right to the other girl. Mac recognized her vaguely, in the way he sort of knew anyone he’d been locked in the same building with eight hours a day for ten years  - she was a junior too. She was pretty; that is, she checked off all the boxes of what pretty girls on TV and in magazines looked like, with their long, super-straight hair and thick rings of black eyeliner. Certainly better looking than Dee and her fucked-up back, he knew that.

"So, Dennis told us you can get us weed?" She asked, raking a hand through her dark hair, a little stringy from sweat. Mac glanced at Dennis, who nodded subtly, encouragingly. He pushed his hands against the pavement, pulling himself a little more upright.

“Depends. How much cash you got?”

“ _Mac._ ” Dennis hissed under his breath, and Mac felt his face getting warm. Shit, what did he do to make Dennis mad? He was always saying the wrong thing when it came to girls, and Dennis always got annoyed. “I mean...first one’s free.”

That was a sucker rule, he knew that. His dad told him that once, a rare, precious piece of advice when he bragged about how big his gig selling weed and oxy was getting. _You always charge up front, because someone else could swoop in with the next batch and you’ve just screwed yourself out of product and cash._ That was another reason he was working so hard to clear out the competition. His dad would be so impressed.

But right now, Dennis relaxed as the girl settled in next to him, and shot Mac an approving smile. Mac pushed any thoughts of his parents from his mind.

It didn’t take long for the joint he passed around to kick in. Every movement felt slow and weightless, even as Dee grew sweaty and anxious - she never could handle the paranoia - even as Dennis put his hand on the girl’s knee, then her thigh. Her name might be Lucy. Mac wasn’t sure. It felt like the world was echoing, ringing all around him, even in the stillness of the afternoon.

Someone - Dennis, probably, he always rose above all other voices - suggest truth or dare. Mac faded in and out of focus, ignoring the giggles and arguments and Dee trying and failing to scale the underside of the bleachers, until a slight push of air in front of his face pulled his focus. Maybe-Lucy was snapping her fingers right in front of his face.

“Hello? Ground Control to Ronnie.”

“Don’t call me that.” He mumbled, pushing his hair back, out of his eyes. Lucy rolled her eyes and fell back, Dennis’ waiting arm curling around her hips.

“I said, I dare you to kiss Dee.” Her voice broke with giggles on the word _Dee_ , and she fell back against Dennis’ chest. His eyebrows raised as he laughed even harder than Lucy. Something cold and unpleasant twisted in Mac’s stomach.

“Fuck that.” He said, and in his peripheral he saw Dee’s fists ball up at her sides. “That’s like kissing Dennis.”

As soon as he said it he knew it was wrong, the way everyone fell silent and tense. Lucy raised an eyebrow, coughing a little on the cigarette Dennis handed her - he traded weed for tobacco an indiscriminate amount of time before.

“...How is it like kissing Dennis?” She said, and her voice threatened to spill over with giggles, the teasing kind. The urge to punch her pulsed through him.

“Yeah, buddy, what are you talking about?”

“Just. You know. They’re twins.” Mac blurted out, staccato. His heart beat very fast all of the sudden.

“Not _identical_.” Dee piped up, indignant.

“Thank God for that.” Dennis intoned, and Lucy laughed. Mac joined in, too hard, anything to get the attention of him. “Seriously dude, you’re sixteen, it’s time.” He leaned into Lucy. “He’s never kissed anyone.”

“Fuck you!” Mac lunged at him, hot rage swelling in his stomach and chest and head. He couldn’t believe Dennis would just blurt out, in front of a stranger, what Mac only told him drunk and in secret a few months before.“That’s fucking private!”

Dennis deftly leaned out of the way, leaving Mac to fall on his hands, seething. “Oops.” He said, lightly, and Lucy laughed again. “Seriously though, even Sweet Dee has, and she looks like a Transformer.”

“Fuck you.” Dee said, her eyes alight with hurt and anger.

“You wish.” Dennis snapped, and Dee’s gaze dropped. Before anyone knew what was happening, she leaned over, grabbed Mac from behind, by the jagged, cut-up ends of his sleeves.

The metal bar of her brace that ran over her breast dug into his back as she leaned over his shoulder and messily planted a crooked, wet kiss on his lips. Her mouth was cold and the chill ran right though his skin and down into the pit of his stomach. She pulled back before he even had a chance to respond.

 _No._ A very soft voice piped up in his mind. Not a protest. A command. _No._

“Heyyyy!” Dennis whooped, laughing, and clapped. “There we go!” Mac wiped Dee’s lip gloss off his mouth and part of his cheek, his face flaming.

Dee sat back down, equally crimson, and bright-eyed with tears. “Why are you laughing, you dared us!”

“I dared _him_!” Dennis was wheezing, in his attempt to smoke and cackle at the same time. “Jesus, I didn’t think he’d actually do it! _You and Mac?_ That’s _disgusting!”_

“Screw you, Den.” Mac stood up, his combat boots scraping against the ground and sending a few rogue pebbles flying. He still blushed way too easily, his horrible Irish skin so pale and freckly it gave away his every thought and feeling. He was too much of a badass to cry, but he still felt something pricking at the back of his eyes. Allergies. Rage. Pick one.

“Come on, man, it’s funny!” He looked straight into Mac’s face then, and it felt like he was beaming straight into his head. “It’s Sweet Dee!”

 _Laugh_ , he seemed to command, through movement of his eyes. _I gave your first kiss away to my sister, that’s hilarious._ The curl of his lip taunted him. _What the hell were you going to do with it anyway?_

Like he knew. He _couldn’t._ Mac couldn’t ever, ever let anyone know. What his tiny, shameful, sinful hope for his first kiss was, buried deep in his core. Dennis couldn't know.

“You’re all fucking retards.” Mac kicked some dust towards Sweet Dee’s face, just for good measure. But he sat back down. His heart beat in his throat. He tried to breathe as Dennis went right back to holding court. His dad was right. Giving drugs away was for suckers.

Everything had a price.

 


	4. Charlie

**Charlie is seventeen**

Charlie’s mom had one of her friends over, and he knew it was best for everyone if he hid in his room until they left.

It wasn’t so bad, he just drew and got high. He was saving up to buy a keyboard, like the one he sometimes messed around with in the band room at school, to drown out the sounds. Until then, if it was too loud to deal with, he called Mac on his half of the old, taped-up walkie-talkie set they got in second grade, and Mac would climb up the fire escape to hang out with him, drinking a stolen can of beer.

So he sat on the floor of his bedroom, rolling a joint in the torn up strips of one of his drawings he didn’t end up liking. It might give the weed a crayon taste, which he found interesting. And Mac talked to him. _At_ him, more like. Whenever Charlie tried to respond he lost focus and messed up.

"Seriously though, dude, how far have you ever gone?"

It's a subject he brought up a lot lately, half teasing, half berating: Charlie's virginity. _Why does he still have it. Does he even want to get rid of it. What is he, some kind of queer._ Tha-thunk tha-thunk, hitting the same dull beats everytime.

Charlie had no idea where it all came from. Before a few weeks ago, they rarely talked about girls, or sex at all. He sighed and leaned forward, onto his hands and knees, to search for his lighter under his bed. God, he missed a few weeks ago.

"Jesus dude, why do you _care?_ " There was a tear in the seam of Mac’s shirt, slowly ripping it apart from the bottom. Charlie normally would just scooch in close and sew it back up for him while they talked, but Mac was pissing him off tonight.

"Because it's weird, Charlie!"

"Why?"

Mac slumped against the side of the bed frame, a look of exasperation painted on his face, the same one he wore when Charlie asked him to read the hot lunch list to him at school. "Okay, like, what about when you're macking on a girl? Don't you want to keep going?"

"Mac-ing. Is that like, something you made up? Is that like your move?”

Mac stared, dead-eyed, incredulous. “M-A-C- _K_ -ing, Charlie. With a _K._ ”

“Ah, right.” Charlie said after a pause, though he didn’t get the difference. How was he supposed to, just by hearing it? Mac wasn’t even his real name (though Mac shoved him the last time he called him Ronnie.) “Well, it can be both ways.”

“No it fucking can’t, you just can’t spell.”

“So it’s like what, kissing?” He changed the subject. Mac stretched his foot across the carpet to kick him. "Fuck off, I'm asking a question!"

"Yes, it's fucking kissing."

Charlie shrugged and passed the joint to Mac, who traded him the beer without thinking. They were a well-oiled machine when it came to getting wasted. "Wouldn't know."

There was a pause as Mac got his meaning. "Shit." He choked on his own spit a little and coughed harshly, still clenching the joint between his teeth. _"You've never even kissed anyone?"_

For the first time, Charlie felt his face getting warm; he didn’t like being gaped at. He reached over and shoved Mac's shoulder half-heartedly. "Calm down.”

“Dude, you're almost an _adult_. How did this even _happen_?”

“It's not like I don't breathe air! It's not-it's not like-like I eat bees!"

Mac's eyebrows knit together. "That's kind of a weird example."

"Really? I don't think so."

"It kind of makes me think you _do_ -"

"God, it doesn't _matter_." It didn't. Not to him. Boys, girls...the idea of being with anyone "like that" was just gross.

Sure, once and awhile, alone at night, a fevered sort of pulse filled him and he would jack off, but sometimes he couldn't even manage that without the memory of something, dark and blurry, tugged at the edge of his consciousness until his stomach ached and he had to stop. He didn’t want to explain to anyone how sometimes he remembered, in flashes and bits, that he might not be a virgin at all. Not even to himself.

Mac fell quiet for a minute, and Charlie reached over and held out the beer to switch off again. But Mac's head just flipped up, his eyes clear-eyed and intense.

"Do you want me to do it?" He asked, and his voice faltered halfway through the sentence.

"What?" Mac shrugged one shoulder. Charlie’s brain, slowed even further with alcohol and weed, caught up. “Wait, _kiss_ me?”

Mac sat up on his knees. "Yeah. Not to be faggy or whatever.” He added, hurriedly, a hand up in defense. “Just so you can get it over with. Just so you know what to do when you do it with a girl?"

Charlie knew Mac liked guys, even if Mac didn't know yet. Everyone acted like he was so goddamn stupid, but he noticed a lot of little things. Like the way Mac looked at Dennis Reynolds, or Chuck Norris movies, or even at Charlie once or twice, when he was really high and thought Charlie couldn't see him. He wondered if this was more for Mac than about getting Charlie through whatever teenaged checklist was suddenly so goddamn important.

Mac was still looking at him, flushed with drink, his eyes big and giving away more eagerness than he probably wanted. The gel was wearing off his hair and it flopped in his eyes. Charlie always thought it looked nicer when it stuck up fluffy like that. It made him look less like his dad, less scary.

He nodded. "Okay."

Mac straightened up on his heels. If he was a dog, his ears would have perked up. "Okay?"

Charlie's face felt warm again. "Yeah, I mean, if it'll shut you up-"

In almost an eye blink, Mac caught himself on his hands, leaned across the space between them, and kissed Charlie.

His lips were chapped and cold from the beer, but he kissed softer then Charlie would've guessed, just from knowing him. He wasn't pushy, didn't try to jam his tongue down Charlie's throat and start jabbing it around. The amount of karate-chopping was nil.

Charlie kept his eyes open (he didn't understand why people wouldn't. Wouldn't you want to see what someone was trying to do to you?) But Mac's closed. He hummed a little into Charlie's mouth as he leaned into it a little more. A strange relaxation, almost serenity, crossed his face as the tension drained from it.

During their very first sleepover, after Bonnie had stuffed them full of ice cream and tucked them in on the living room floor, and told them to sleep tight, she loved them, Mac’s whole body unclenched. His breathing got louder, he dozed off quickly without a twist grimace on his face. He looked like he just experienced what safe was, for the first time.

He looked a lot like he did right now.

A warm, heavy hand pressed down on the thigh of Charlie's jeans. He glanced down and saw with slight horror that Mac was getting hard in his track pants.

For the first time since they started kissing, Charlie felt something. And it wasn't good. That cold, wet panic usually associated with sex made its appearance, in the pit of his stomach, like it had only been late due to traffic.

"Um." He jerked his head and legs away, heart thumping. "Cool."

Mac blinked, disoriented for a second, before coughing and shift away, strategically pulling up a leg to hide his boner. Charlie breathed a little bit easier.

"Yeah, see?" Mac said, busting himself with the beer, holding it up close to his face to examine the label.

"Yeah. Of course." Charlie replied. Though he didn't. He never knew what what happening at times like these. Sometimes he was scared he never would.

It was too quiet, again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. Dennis kisses Dee kisses Mac kisses Charlie. I couldn't resist making them, codependent as they are, inadvertently creating a chain of crappy kisses. It's all Dennis' fault. Thanks for sticking with it, and reviews are always appreciated.


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